Financial job market news Netherlands | Finance news for recruitment in the financial markets

Greed is an emotion as old as time. It's asking too much of human beings to expect those on Wall Street to take as detached a view of the commodity they see pass through their hands as would a manager of a power-generating station takes of kilowatt-hours. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of millions of members of the Anglican Communion, suggested that investment banking bonuses should be capped, and... Read more

There’s an unfortunate perception in London that you can only make real money and have a real ‘London life’ if you work in the city. That just couldn’t be further from the truth. Although undoubtedly the city makes a lot of people rich by normal standards, the reality is that 99% of everyone you see walking around the city earns at maximum a couple of hundred thousand pounds a year –... Read more

Following our previous article on off-sites , and given that they seem to be on the return and that you are practically certain to be attending one sometime soon, here are six people to look out for: 1. The One Who Doesn’t Want To Be There Usually a relatively senior manager and the one most people want to schmooze. They genuinely believe that off-sites are a total waste of time (and usually... Read more

I was a newbie in a bank once, so please don't take this the wrong way. I’m writing this in the context of “things I wish I knew then”… 1) You’re useless One day, with careful nurturing, you might be useful, but until you wise up you are a cost centre. Whatever your job title you are an apprentice. 2) You’re dumber than the people you work with Banking pays better than real... Read more

Back in the day, JPM derivatives desk was known as being the most aggressive of the bulge banks(it still had the legacy team of Bill Winters tenure at the time). Certainly, for challenging interviews it blew all the other banks I looked at (GS, Deutsche, Merrill, Morgan) out of the water. This was the main reason I accepted JPM in the end: I knew the guys on the desk thought in... Read more

In the same way that Margaret Thatcher (allegedly) said that anyone using a bus aged more than 26 can count him or herself a failure in life, can the same thing be said for anyone aged 35+ who’s obliged to send in their CV for job applications? Some people seem to think so. “If I received a CV from a standard candidate who’d left university aged 21-22 and was a senior VP... Read more

Forget the state of the state in Greece, the increasing fear of the European debt mountain and the country by country downgrades being undertaken by the ratings agencies (reflecting their very limited credibility these days). Forget the overhang of the coalition budget, inflation and the state of the currency. Forget all of that (and anything else that worries you), because things must be getting better – off-sites are back. Off-sites... Read more

When I lost my job in investment banking a few years ago, I decided to be proactive. Rather than lolling around and watching videos of cats on YouTube, I determined to move into the buyside. That determination paid off, and I have worked in private equity for the past few years. In order to land my current role, I did (a lot of) cold calling. Most buyside firms which were still... Read more

Right, I’ll come out of the closet and say it. I work in investment banking and I don’t mind paying high income taxes. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be back at 40% or at the 15% that somewhere like HK levies but that’s just not viable now and possibly won’t be for some time to come. Firstly, if you know now that you will be earning the £150k+... Read more

The City has always attracted people who have a talent for making money, who can handle (or hope they can handle) risk and the associated stress that goes with it. Historically, this has bred a macho attitude, with certain personality aspects overlooked for the sake of high performance. The tide, however, is turning. When we conducted some research alongside Cass business school, we asked senior managers in financial services to... Read more

A study by ECA International, an expat consultancy, confirms this week what British-born City workers have probably suspected for some time: it’s not really that expensive to live in London, providing you don’t insist upon living in Kensington and Chelsea. ECA ranks Central London as the 78th most expensive city in Europe; suburban London ranks 107th; Southampton (slightly more than 1 hour outside London) ranks 131st. The most expensive cities in... Read more

The next big market crash won’t be in sovereign debt or credit default swaps. It will be in the post-MBA job market. The recession has given many people working in finance an excuse to take the plunge and apply for an MBA. The first wave is just graduating into a tough job market, and there are few prospects of improvement over the next few years as the financial sector continues... Read more

Forget Jefferies, there are other pretenders to the up-and-coming banking throne. RBC, which has already been hiring enthusiastically this year, is far from finished yet. And KBW has some substantive recruiting intentions too. RBC’s plans are outlined in the Financial Times today. Although it’s already hired 530 people into its capital markets business this year (140 in Europe), the Canadian bank still wants to: - Hire in equity research and sales (it’s halfway through... Read more

There’s no issue more sensitive than age. In the UK, and the US age discrimination is illegal, which means banks are unlikely to explicitly ask you how old you are. But this doesn’t mean that they won’t be able to work it out. Most banks will assess your “age” by looking at how much full-time work experience you’ve had after graduating from university. Chances are that 10 years of full-time work experience... Read more

So you work somewhere in the middle office (risk/finance/trade support), and you want to work somewhere in the front office (sales/trading/structuring)? What do you need to do to your CV to make this happen? Firstly, a qualifying point. It is not that easy to move into the front office from a middle office role. It is especially hard if you are attempting to do so on the basis of sending your... Read more

An article was published on this site recently which attested to the ‘hotness of CIMA students in the current market’. It also questioned CIMA’s fit with the financial services industry. The article generated a large number of comments in protest. CIMA welcomes this opportunity to set the record straight and give the reasons why many leading employers in investment banking consider CIMA ideal for working in finance. As many of... Read more

After eFinancialCareers so controversially and comprehensively highlighted the shortcomings of the recruiter community last week last week, I feel it only fair to point out that candidates are by no means impeccable either. From long years as a financial services recruiter, this – in my experience – is what the many incompetent candidates out there are guilty of. 1) Lying This includes lying on CVs and lying about whether they’ve applied to... Read more

There’s an enormous fuss being made about bankers’ pay and efforts to reform it. As a result, we have ‘new’ compensation arrangements. From where I stand, however, they don’t look particularly new at all - unless I’m missing something, of course. 1. Deferrals Deferred payments have been held up in the press and by politicians on both sides of the Atlantic as the silver bullet when it comes to managing... Read more

I'm looking for a sales trading position, which involves a bit on the way of prop generation and execution - the best of both worlds. As volumes have been thin, there hasn't been much need for many execution traders. Equally, with machines and algos doing most of the work., I feel a bit stuck. Advice would be much appreciated! EDUCATION 2003 – 2007 UK UNIVERSITY BA (Hons) Degree in... Read more

The headlines are deafening – Goldman Sachs has committed massive fraud, Jamie Dimon’s JPMorgan bought Washington Mutual on the cheap because he belongs to a secret cabal of politicians and Wall St bankers, and Stanford and Madoff stole money from old ladies under the regulators’ noses. And yet, every day, juniors at investment banks participate in a huge Ponzi scheme –the analyst and associate programmes. Wrap a cold towel around your... Read more